This is a choice, but not a difficult one worth hesitating over.
“I trust your deduction.” Huo Ranyin did not question Ji Xun, but without hesitation, he stood on the side of duty. “But whether there’s danger or not, the current situation is that a victim has been kidnapped, and we must find the person.”
“I didn’t say we shouldn’t look for the person…” Ji Xun sighed, getting a bit of a headache. If Meng Fushan were standing right in front of him at this moment, he would have already beaten him to death—making him constantly solve difficult problems! “Figuring out a way to find the person quickly, accurately, and ruthlessly without alerting the kidnappers is the real business here…”
He pondered for a moment, his gaze sweeping over the street time and time again.
“No pedestrians around have noticed anything wrong, which means the kidnappers made very little commotion. Knocking the person out and bringing them into the hotel pretending they are sleepy is the simplest way.”
The other two nodded slightly, confirming Ji Xun’s deduction.
“The fruit vendor is keeping watch. Going in directly in plain clothes, flashing a police ID to check on people is, of course, the worst strategy. Calling the front desk to remotely direct them is honestly also risky—for example, the phone might already be tapped, or the front desk clerk might actually be one of the kidnappers’ people. I just passed by the hotel and saw a sign hanging outside saying they are hiring, which proves the hotel is short-staffed. So we have to prepare for the possibility that the kidnappers have planted an insider in the hotel,” Ji Xun continued his analysis. “If we alert the snake in the grass due to a momentary oversight…”
Ji Xun held back from saying things like letting Meng Fushan take the fall. Meng Fushan was a strong, professionally trained adult male. If by some misfortune he really got into trouble because of their actions, there was nothing that could be done. At most, Ji Xun would tip him off in time, tell him his life was more important, and urge him to run as far away as possible—after all, as long as the green mountains remain, one shouldn’t worry about running out of firewood.
Currently, the most concerning thing was still the victim in the hands of the kidnappers.
“Captain Huo, I know your nose is good, and your ears are pretty sharp too, right?” Ji Xun turned to ask Huo Ranyin. Since they were talking business, his way of addressing Huo Ranyin became much more serious.
“…I can barely give it a try.” Huo Ranyin frowned slightly. “It depends on exactly how thick the hotel’s walls and doors are. Also, if the victim has been drugged and is in a deep sleep, I can’t guarantee I’ll be able to hear the breathing.”
“I have an idea,” Zhao Wu suddenly interjected. “I just checked this place’s room count on Dianping, and found that all its rooms have windows. I’ll have the station send a drone over to fly around the windows. First, we screen out the ones without anyone inside, then we focus our investigation on the remaining ones. Once the scope is narrowed, the case will be easy to handle.”
Ji Xun added, “What if my deduction is wrong, and the kidnappers have already used some other method to hide the person somewhere we don’t know about, or have simply already taken them away from here? What if none of the guests in the hotel are the person we’re looking for…”
“…” Zhao Wu sighed. “There’s nothing we can do about that. Let’s just search first and talk later.”
The flying sound of the drone was like a large mosquito flapping its wings rapidly in the dark night.
Because the “mosquito” had a color almost identical to the night sky, even though the buzzing sound made some people feel uncomfortable, they couldn’t see the drone clearly when they looked up.
It was like a ghost in the dark night, silently approaching the windows of the building—some dim, some bright—and using its faithful eyes to record the scenes inside one by one…
“This hotel is small-scale—three floors in total, 58 rooms. Seven rooms have their curtains drawn: 4 on the second floor, 3 on the third floor. Of the remaining 51 without drawn curtains, most are empty, and the victim is not among the occupied ones.”
“Although the internet frequently exposes scams and even personal harm caused by privacy leaks, judging from this hotel’s big data, people’s awareness of privacy protection is even weaker than I imagined,” Ji Xun commented.
“How should I put this? You can only be a thief for a thousand days; how can you guard against a thief for a thousand days?” Zhao Wu chimed in. “But since there are only seven rooms, it makes our investigation easier… Leave those on the second floor to me. Watch this.”
Next, Zhao Wu showed off a bit of special skill to Ji Xun and Huo Ranyin.
He slipped around to the back of the hotel, stood in the small alley, and lightly stepped on the first floor’s security bars to climb up. Then, he extended two fingers holding a razor blade, gently pushed the glass window open, and sliced a corner off the locked screen window behind it… Inside the hotel, remembering to draw the curtains was already a minority; taking the extra step to open the screen window and then lock the glass window shut was even rarer.
With the screen window breached, he reached his two fingers forward, hooked and swung, lifting a small corner of the curtain. Taking advantage of this gap, he peeked inside…
Alright, done.
Though Zhao Wu looked gruff on the outside, his movements were extremely agile. He climbed up and down silently, without a trace of mortal heaviness, and applied the exact same method to all four rooms with drawn curtains. In less than ten minutes, he had reached a conclusion: “Those 4 rooms are all completely normal.”
Ji Xun was full of praise: “Captain Zhao, you’re really something!”
Zhao Wu replied modestly, “Not at all, not at all. Just average, just average.”
The remaining three rooms were left to Huo Ranyin’s ears to judge.
In Room 3012, a middle-aged man kept his voice low, discussing a building materials business; in Room 3007, the sound of a TV was mixed with the occasional laughter of a relatively young woman.
Only Room 3015 was completely silent.
The three men exchanged glances. After a brief eye contact, they unanimously fixed their gazes on the door of the completely silent Room 3015.
Obviously, this one was the most suspicious.
Now it was Ji Xun’s turn to step up.
He was well-prepared. He took out a rolled-up, A3-sized PVC sheet with a hole cut into it, inserted it from the bottom of the gap on the side of the door, and slowly moved it up to loop the hole over the door handle inside. Then, with a downward tug—
The door opened.
A door without its security chain engaged was just that defenseless.
Inside, it was pitch black, without a sliver of light. The light from the corridor where they stood probed in, illuminating a small triangular area.
Whether it was a strange feeling in Ji Xun’s heart or something else, he felt the edges of this light zone had burrs that continuously pricked at his nerves…
He steeled his heart and fiercely pushed the slightly ajar door wide open!
Only then did the corridor light scramble to shoot in, but it still couldn’t dispel the darkness of the entire room; it could only barely add a bit of confusing fluorescence to the shadows.
They saw the person lying on the bed.
A baby face, a hime cut—she was sleeping peacefully.
This was a high school sophomore. The student ID on her chest bore her name: Fu Baoxin.
A Kun watched the departing ship as it crossed the water’s boundary in the blink of an eye, disappearing without a trace, just like it was escaping from this piece of the world.
Where would it go? Perhaps it would cross the entire Pacific Ocean to the other end of the world. Perhaps it would follow the ocean currents to the South China Sea—a place the ancestors of Fujian Province could swim to with their eyes closed.
It had been a very, very long time since A Kun had been on a boat. Even on a cruise ship in a scenic area, he would get a little seasick not long after getting on board.
People say seasickness is caused by some organ or balance issue inside the ear. A Kun had even asked doctors about it, but unfortunately, apart from prescribing a few pills, nothing improved.
Those unfortunate people packed in shipping containers, destined for unknown places, must be even more seasick than him, right? Without fresh air, wailing amidst the tossing waves—those cries would leave nothing behind except serving as an embellishment to the great chorus of the ocean waves.
However, tonight, Fei Lengcui did not become one of those unfortunate people.
Fei Lengcui was squatting and whimpering under the slightly ajar lid of a shipping container deliberately forgotten by the ship. The sound was faint, barely audible, like an animal’s dying cry for help.
A Kun confidently pushed the lid aside.
The moonlight, which had been blocked outside like water, shone in and fell on the woman. What should have been a gentle light seemed to scorch her like a flame.
She abruptly raised her head, revealing a tear-stained, terrified face.
“Don’t be afraid,” A Kun softened his voice, “I’m here to help you.”
I am here to find you.
Fei Lengcui.
The standoff lasted for about a minute or two.
But it didn’t matter. He waited patiently throughout. He knew he had a good-looking exterior, and this exterior could disarm the defenses of the vast majority of people in this world.
Fei Lengcui was, of course, among them.
When A Kun silently counted to 120 in his heart, the woman staying inside the container finally laid down her heavy burden, threw herself into his arms, and cried loudly.
He held this woman.
He felt her flowing long hair, her soft body, her vibrant breath of life.
Gently, he led her to sit on a bench nearby, took out the thermos cup he carried with him, and placed it between the woman’s freezing hands.
The aroma of tea curled upwards. Fei Lengcui’s spirit was soothed by this bit of warmth fluttering in the sea breeze. In a daze, she began to explain what she had encountered, why she was there, and why she was crying.
Then she asked him, Who are you, and how did you find me?
A Kun simply listened patiently, responding with perfect timing. His exterior, coupled with his polite and refined demeanor, made him seem like a gentleman of the old era walking straight out of an oil painting.
He told Fei Lengcui: A friend of mine dropped a very important treasure by the sea. She is a very important friend to me, so at her request, I came here to search everywhere. After searching for a long time, I heard a sound that was very similar. I walked over to look, and I found you.
People really should read more books.
In a book about film editing, A Kun had read an example like this: Three shots—a man fires a gun at the sky, a bird flies past, the man puts the gun away.
When played in sequence, the audience understands the story the director wants to express: the man shooting at the bird.
If the middle shot is replaced, swapping the bird for an airplane, the story of shooting at a bird becomes the story of a man shooting at an airplane.
In fact, the three shots are completely disconnected from each other. The key to forming the story lies solely in one thing: “sequence.”
Piece them together, frame by frame, in a certain sequence, and if you piece them together beautifully, it becomes a good story.
—Meow.
A black cat wagged its tail and walked past them. Smiling, A Kun picked it up and placed this weak yet adorable animal into Fei Lengcui’s arms.
Even though Fei Lengcui clearly understood nothing, it was as if she understood everything: “So you came to find a cat.”
“Yes, a cat with emerald green eyes.”
